Gold Wreath

Famous quotes containing the words gold and/or wreath:

    Arrive in the afternoon, the late light slanting
    In diluted gold bars across the boulevard brag
    Of proud, seamed faces with mercy and murder hinting
    here, there, interrupting, all deep and debonair,
    The pink paint on the innocence of fear;
    Walk in a gingerly manner up the hall.
    Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)

    But seldom the laurel wreath is seen
    Unmixed with pensive pansies dark;
    There’s a light and a shadow on every man
    Who at last attains his lifted mark—
    Nursing through night the ethereal spark.
    Elate he never can be;
    He feels that spirits which glad had hailed his worth,
    Sleep in oblivion.—The shark
    Glides white through the phosphorus sea.
    Herman Melville (1819–1891)